


Softly Passing

by ArmsShanks



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Spoilers, That's all I got, and there's some spooky stuff, and trees, gratuitous descriptions of snow, lightly illustrated, mako lives in the woods, okay so like, there may or may not be krampus junkrat at some point
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2019-09-29 14:14:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17204885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmsShanks/pseuds/ArmsShanks
Summary: Mako retires in the woods.





	1. Chapter 1

 

* * *

 

The silence is the best home Mako has ever had.

Of course, it’s not _pure_ silence. The old pines creak occasionally. The snow shifts. A small animal scurries through the forest, and on very, very still nights, he can sometimes hear a train in the far off distance.

It’s just the right amount of silence, though. The log cabin cradled by its embrace sits high in a mountain range capped by the natural whorl of unbothered snowbanks and populated by hardy greenery. No power lines reach far north. He reads by candlelight, taking his time as he treads the familiar passages of well worn pages.

Mako hasn’t always lived like this. Once upon a time he lived elsewhere. Once upon a time he did other things. Once upon a time he did other things that he is not proud of.

Afterwards he fell like a burnt out star, arcing over the mountains. He shed his money like the millisecond of glory as that star entered the atmosphere, spent on a simple cabin. He lands, unremarkable, amongst the peaks of a far off land. He is not made of precious ore; no curious prospectors will come by to recover him.

And now there is silence. Finally.

He tightens his scarf against the chill as he walks through the woods, wading knee-deep in snow. It helps with the wind but not the ever-present sense of claustrophobia he gets from the darkness. He should have left for this task earlier, but he had forgotten as time slid away in the calm afternoon.

He is searching for the middle of nowhere; a place far enough away that he wouldn’t be able to find it again. He doesn’t like to cut trees near his home; he prefers its unblemished natural state, peeking out from the trees around it like it’s been part of the landscape just as long. Eventually he finds a mark; an ancient and dying spruce, a few needles blackened past its prime. He takes his sturdy, two handed monster of an axe and makes short work of old wood. It creaks as it falls, and the sound echos against its more fortunate brethren. He trims the more errant branches off and straps them to his back. A thick cord is tied around the remaining trunk and the thick man finds little challenge in dragging it back through the groove in the snow he initially carved.

He’s repeated these motions dozens of times. The tree will be all the energy he needs for quite some time, powering his stove and furnace. He rarely goes out so late though, and the cold is creeping between the seams of his thick coat and lined snow pants. The path home looks more like a cave into some unknown depth than a stroll between the trees and the slow crawl of claustrophobia tingles irrationally at his neck.

It should be snowing. He has a sixth sense for this sort of thing, ever since he moved here. It should be snowing but it’s definitely not. The wind should be whistling and white flakes should be dancing within it but the air is still and dense. Despite mother nature’s strange sedentary twist, he suddenly has trouble finding the path he walked out on. He growls low, dragging his cargo through the thick carpet of layered snow, and beneath his irritation he hears a sound.

He turns his head too quickly, nearly catching an eyeful of twigs. He sees nothing but the same repeating cut and paste pattern of tall tree trunks and white-laden pines. The sound had been something high-pitched; a soft tinkle. Nothing more. Not something that belonged here and now though. Not miles above the sea level shrouded in the darkness of an early setting sun.

Mako puts aside the curiosity in favor of action; he’s not an idiot. He may be living off the grid but he has backups. He pulls a small, simple satellite-driven GPS from deep within his layers and has to suffer the discomfort of pulling off a mitt to activate it and be pointed in the direction of home. He continues on, dragging his quarry and occasionally referencing his tiny backlit beacon.

It’s in those moments especially that he feels watched.

He’s heard things about these forests. These mountains. Things that make the locals stay away but signalled to Mako that this was just where he should be. He does not belay the essence of supernatural that mothers warn their children with, but he’s yet to meet a creature in his day or dreams that could scare him away.

His handheld north star eventually leads him home, and he drags the tree alongside his humble abode for splitting tomorrow morning. The branches come inside to dry. He should light some in the fireplace and warm up, but it feels somehow sacrilegious. The crackle of flame would pierce this night. The fire would shine like a lighthouse drawing some vague other into port. He settles into bed under layers upon layers of woolen blankets, knowing his body heat will warm them soon enough alongside the previous day’s woodburning that lingers.

The cabin blends in with the woods, dark and unmoving, dry and chill. Prying eyes should be uninterested in the unremarkable, but perhaps he’s already drawn too much attention. Mother nature holds her breath. The snow does not yet fall. Stranger things have business still before the evidence is erased.

 

* * *

 

 

There are hoofprints at Mako’s door.

He’s already stomped over most of them by the time he notices. It’s not unusual to see animal tracks in his area but never right up to the door. Out of idle curiosity he attempts to glean their direction. The circular depressions come from the woods straight to his door. They muck around a bit but make definite steps around the tree he felled, as if inspecting it. The snow is particularly crushed around a window. He doesn’t see a path back into the woods.

Hunh.

The wind must have blown over some of the tracks, he thinks, steadfastly ignoring the lack of anything more than a light breeze today. He goes about his business dashing the cloven patterns to get to work, breaking down the log into sections easily digested by his fireplace. Shocks of dull noise crack through the chill air, ricocheting off trees in a strangely erratic echo. The effort makes him overheat under his layers and he eventually sheds his coat. Beads of sweat sting in the cold along his arms as he swings the axe in practiced motions. His breath comes in heavy and out in clouds by the end, and he rolls his shoulders to break his muscles from the repetitive motion.

As he falls silent, so does the mountain. Mako almost makes a face at the yawning atmosphere where he should be hearing the cry of birds and the skittering of rodents. The branches barely bring themselves to creak as they stand erect, unmoving in the dead air.

Something is crawling up his neck. It’s the kind of feeling that kept him alive long enough to be here today, and it makes him reflexively reach for a weapon he no longer wears. He grips the axe tighter for just a moment, grey eyes scanning the barcoded horizon of dark grey trees. He then huffs at the stupidity and grabs his coat. He lumbers back into his home and shuts the door hard enough that snow falls off the roof behind him.

Finally, the wind starts. The snow is not long behind it. Night descends, pulling its comforting cowl over the peak and despite himself, Mako draws the curtains against it.

 

* * *

 

 

Days pass. Mako shakes his superstition as soon as he recognizes it for what it is. It helps that time quietly trundles on much as it always has. He repairs an old piece of furniture. He makes his way through another two books. He sits by the fire and he teaches himself to knit with fumbling, too-big fingers and a significantly drier tome.

He still feels the tickle in the back of his mind. It comes and goes like any other weather pattern, and he paints it over with indifference so it blends into the background of his pale painted surroundings. He doesn’t bother looking out the windows anymore; there’s nothing new to see. He eats, he sleeps, he lives the slow, simple life he’s picked for himself like a warm cup of tea in the morning.

One night he wakes up and his eyes are automatically trained to the window nearest his bed. Two green points of light flicker out like unearthly fireflies behind the heavily frosted glass. The hairs on the back of his neck are standing on end and Mako feels like he’s woken up at the peak of mounting dread. It makes no sense and only serves to irritate him.

Fuck the lights, real or not. Fuck the fear and his animal brain telling him to run. If some demon wants to come for him in the night, so be it. He’s seen worse and punched it in the face. Until then, Mako is going to get his ten hours.

 

* * *

 

After he accepts the situation, things get a lot smoother.

He doesn’t search for them, but occasionally oddities present themselves. Little slivers of unnerving unreality dip their toes into the still lake of his blissfully mundane life. He’ll hear a distant and unmelodious chime. He’ll find trails of hoofprints around his home that stop and start erratically. He’ll catch sight of green stars in the distance, though they always blink out shortly after.

The part of his brain that tells him to run is the same part that told him to stay in the closet. It’s the little voice that kept him from showing his face at his mother’s funeral. It abstracts and fractures out in many ways but it echoes the jeering ringmaster of the circus of his past failures that puts on a show in his dreams.

He silences it, as he has silenced everything else, and slowly he embraces the way his neck prickles and the feeling of iridescent eyes at his back. It’s almost comforting, in a way. The sense that he isn’t alone keeps him company on a night where snow whips so fierce and thick around his sturdy little shack that he fears it will cover his window before the night is through. How will the boogeyman watch him if he’s snowed in?

When he wakes up the next morning, there is a perfectly clear patch of snow no higher than the tread of his boots in front of his door. To either side, snowdrifts cover his windows.

His mouth quirks in a smile.

The following morning after the sun has melted down the piles at least a bit, he grabs a mammoth shovel and actually heads out the door. What feels like a very deliberate pile of snow falls on his head immediately as he passes the threshold.

Somewhere in the woods, he hears the tinkle of bells.


	2. Chapter 2

 

 

* * *

 

 

The snow is still deep when he wades out, brushing the heavy fluff off his hat, but it’s deep in a way that he can uniquely manage. It will be tiring making it to town through snow that often comes up to his thighs and higher, but by now he knows the paths of least resistance, where the snowdrifts will have blown thin. He leaves a small trench in his wake as he begins the trek to town.

He carries his nearly plough-sized shovel over his shoulder and steels himself for a day of hard labour. Clearing snow from the closest village so its denizens can make it out of their doors is a service he and his muscles and his size are well suited to. The labour is a form of currency which has netted him otherwise free food and supplies from the friendly townsfolk. They don’t have much use for traditional money, living so far north that all they receive from the outside world are necessities by a truck that comes once a week. Being in the village is like stepping back to a simpler time, and though Mako has no need for the company, if he had to pick any group of people, he supposes he wouldn’t mind it being them.

It takes two hours of walking to make it to the quaint little place. He relieves the flustered general store owner of his fruitless struggle, cleaning out the entrance in a scant ten minutes. Mako then sets about freeing the doorways that have not yet been broken in by their residents and is thanked with brief respite by carefully tended hearths and warm drinks. He has to use his inhaler to get through the exertion, but it’s worth it to see happy faces with rosy cheeks poke their heads outside and wave, despite his general distaste for humanity at this point in his life. A young girl marvels at a veritable boulder of snow that he lifts in front of her just to show off. The kids here aren’t so bad.

(It probably helps that he can’t understand most of them.)

The sun is nearly down by the time he’s finished his chores, and the villagers beckon him into the general store. It’s half store, half tavern, really. It boasts a cozy sitting area where every adult has their regular seats and the children run around their feet. A spot on a hefty sofa is relinquished for Mako, and he is roped into spending time amongst them, despite his polite posturing against it.

He partakes in a rich cider that warms him from toe to tip and allows himself to relax into the creaking couch. He does not say much, but they are used to it already from his infrequent visits. They make an effort to speak more English than they would typically so he can follow either way. Multiple languages weave around him, sharing news about Ingrid’s baby getting over a rough cold and Herwig’s newest woodworking project. Gossip flies at lightning speed that Mako will never understand but suspects is largely jokes upon inside jokes. He eats a meal of hearty seasoned potatoes - they try their best to feed him though most of their main courses consist of hunted local wildlife. The place smells of woodsmoke and rosemary and mulled wine.

 

 

He’s never known closeness like the townsfolk share, and he supposes that he should find that a little sad. He had no spite left to spare for his past though, and simply enjoys the atmosphere from his corner, overwhelming as it is.

When the faces and the words become too much, his gaze often ends up drawn to the window and the dark, cold world outside. He sees a couple of the wooden houses and the encroaching forest. He squints, like he’s looking for something, and then a happy shout or an outbreak of laughter refocuses him on the warmth inside.

“Tricky weather we’ve been having, eh Mr. Rutledge?”

“Mm,” Mako half grunts half murmurs in response. He drags his eyes from the window for the umpteenth time.

“That time of year, I suppose. Don’t envy you living out there all alone.”

“Meine Mama sagt, dass gefährliche Dinge im Wald leben.”

Mako turns to the young voice, the only one to speak German directly at him. The little girl from earlier has a gap in her teeth and dirty blonde pigtails and she keeps peeking at him from behind various pieces of furniture. She looks like an advertising executive’s definition of a wholesome innocent little darling, missing one tooth and all. Mako tilts his head in polite confusion before the girl’s mother steps in.

“Freya, stör Mr. Rutledge nicht!” the woman scolds. She looks up at Mako with an apologetic half-smile. “Sorry, she’s just trying to be… helpful.”

The girl ducks down behind a chair. Her voice is muffled. “Ich sag’ nur, was du mir immer sagst! Dass er vor dem bösen Mann im Wald aufpassen soll…“

The mother laughs, walks over to her daughter and picks her up; she immediately buries her face in her mother’s neck. “Don’t worry, the goat man only comes for little children who stay up way past their bedtime.” She tousles her child’s hair. “Du bist die einzige, die sich vor dem Krampus fürchten muss, junges Fräulein, wenn du nicht gleich im Bett liegst.”

The woman tosses one last smirk Mako’s way before taking her daughter to the door, unleashing a brief blast of cold wind that makes the candle flames flicker. Mako’s mouth takes up the initiative for once, as his eyes are momentarily fixated on the dark portal.

“What’s the goat man?”

There’s a pause in the room. Mako so rarely speaks that everyone turns when his low voice rumbles out of him, undercutting the high current of jovial conversation. After the silence he’s met with a mix of stimuli. There’s laughing, there’s jokes, and there’s weary looks.

“You know like, Krampus? That’s what city folk have been calling him, anyway.”

“He punishes misbehaving children around christmas.”

“Just old wives tales, along with all that nonsense about witches and demons.”

“Watch your language around the children, Thorsten.”

“Nuh-uhn, I saw him when I was a kid! Swear it!”

“Best stay out of the woods at night just in case, Rutledge.”

“The horned god.”

The answers he receives are a conversation around him rather than directed straight at him. The last clear response he gets stands out in his head, and his grey eyes find the older woman who had muttered it, sitting in the corner with her tea.

Talk of the apparent half-goat half-demon of lore carries on for some time. Conflicting stories are told by laughing adults while the children are promised coal and lashes if they don’t believe them. A couple of the oldtimers who seem to take the affair more seriously reference offerings that they still leave on Krampusnacht, fine goods outside their door for the safety of their little town.

The one thing they all agree on is to not go into the woods alone. They don’t voice it straight out, but he can feel it, just as he can feel their eyes when they think he’s not looking. They think him stupid or deeply, deeply strange. They’re probably right.

 _The horned god_. The phrase sticks in Mako’s head as he calls it a night and thanks the shopkeep for his hospitality. _The horned god_.

Interesting.

Tired from food and socialization, he is offered a room in one of the village’s larger houses. His muscles ache from the exhaustion of his earlier labour and so he agrees with no small amount of internal sighing. He already misses his solitary cabin dearly. He will head out before the sun is up.

For now, he shrugs into a too-small too-soft bed to the distracting and uncomfortable sounds of children pattering around in the next room. He faces the opposite wall which features a warmly sealed glass window. The stars outside are hidden by clouds unlit by any electronic light pollution. The panel vanishes in his half-lidded gaze into the void, which seems to creep in and wrap him up in a chilly, yawning pit of comfort. He falls asleep. He doesn’t recall closing his eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

He ends up staying an hour later than usual, waiting politely for the store owner to wake. Words are exchanged in barter for Mako to procure a couple extra items. Afterwards he gathers his things in his pack and hoists his shovel over one shoulder and heads out into the snow, leaving the flickering candlelight of almost-civilization behind once more.

The cold air tastes different after time with humanity. Like a revitalizing drink. It doesn’t even irritate his scarred lungs as he breathes deep among the pines. Powdered crystals sparkle along every available surface in the sun as it crawls degrees higher in the sky and the hardy trees seem to reach out and invite him into their deadened fold. He hopes he does not have to go back there for awhile.

His waded path from yesterday morning has vanished and the snow certainly hasn’t gotten any thinner, but he finds his way home in what feels like record time. The solitary wooden cabin is a sight for sore eyes, and he quickly heads for the door to unpack his things and rest after an eventful pair of days.

An unusual disturbance gives him pause before the threshold, but after a moment he pushes through, shrugging off his backpack and dropping his shovel inside. There are hoofprints littered around his windows and door, stopping and starting erratically. Mako stands with his hands crossed in his open doorway looking out, appraising the curious scuffle. Something in him twitches and he lets out a quiet rolling laugh. He shuts the door.

Though he slept plenty in his host family’s house, he’s used to more hours, and people burn him out more than he cares to admit. Once he stores away his consumables, he dedicates the rest of the day to his bed, snoozing on and off until twilight. A ghost of his past life nags at him that he should feel guilty for his sloth, but he didn’t move halfway around the world and away from all responsibilities to feel guilty for goddamn anything.

Night tip-toes into the forest like an old friend. Mako lights a couple extra candles, as he’s feeling extra indulgent. It is then that he remembers his extra purchase.

He paws through his things, yawning, before pulling out a bottle of the village’s specialty cider. He nestles it in an old thatched basket and opens his door to set the package on the threshold, letting a pleasant bit of chilly air in to contrast to the warm fog of heat his hearth has been churning out.

Curiosity does tickle the back of his brain, but he occupies it with a new book he picked up. It isn’t long before his bed calls to him once more though, and he snuffs his candles and dims the fire.

In the morning he will find the bottle and the basket gone.

The next morning, the basket will be back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry, lots and lots of life things. still poking away at my pet project here, don't mind me.
> 
> Thanks to the brilliant [Cauilflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cauilflower/pseuds/Cauilflower) and my dearest friend Maki for quick betaing, and extra special triplicate thanks to [Gigi/piggyofoz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mssileas/pseuds/piggybackride) for writing the German parts and being a general inspiration!


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

* * *

 

 

Mako takes the hint.

He breaks a bit of his finer cheese off the block and a couple of rare grapes. They are gone by the morning, replaced by a small pile of red berries so vibrant that they look superimposed into the nearly monochrome landscape. Mako is not entirely sure about how safe they are to eat, so he sets them aside for now. The returned offering leaves him a bit stumped, and he mulls over what he should send back for a couple days. He eventually settles on a small figure of a pig he carved out of boredom. It vanishes like the rest.

It takes a couple days for the next one. Eventually a thick, birch swatch appears in the snow-filled basket.

Perhaps it expects him to carve another? It's reasonably thick so perhaps he could make something out of it. The choice of wood it certainly interesting; there are not many birch in this area. He can’t see to it now though; he’s decided to work on getting an old generator running for emergencies. According to the townsfolk, each winter has been growing deeper and darker as the years go on, and he may end up needing it.

Time is like taffy out here. Mako can go thirty hours without sleeping, absorbed in a project, barely able to register the shift of the sun into the moon, as it reflects just as well off the snow. He eats simple breads and cheeses and has the occasional glass of wine, smearing greasy fingerprints over his reading glasses.

 

 

Mastery over the mechanical does not come naturally to him, but he does have enough experience to tinker with a manual printed sometime in the eighties by his side. Once upon a time another version of himself had built a motorcycle from stolen metal and kept it running with nothing but duct tape and spite. He doesn’t know where it is anymore. He doesn’t want to know.

(He has a recurring dream where he stumbles upon it in the woods. The beast with all its horns and edges emerges from the snowbank, shedding its pristine trappings just in time to seep oil into the surroundings, turning it midnight black. The oil permeates. It mixes. It grows until the landscape becomes the sky and he’s falling and falling and-)

He washes his hands of the generator with half a mind to toss it outside where he doesn’t have to look at it for awhile. That would be a bad idea considering he’s just gotten it to work though. He shoves it behind his massive armchair and covers it in a thick blanket.

He becomes acutely aware that he stinks. The whole place stinks. He grumbles and grabs a bucket to begin the process of drawing a bath. He opens the door to clear the air of smoke and sweat and sees quite the sight.

His wicker basket is torn nearly in half; its handle is ripped clean off and has vanished to god knows where. Rather than appear smooth to mirror his lack of outdoor activity, there are enough hoofprints in the snow to make one believe a whole herd of deer had held a ball outside his door.

Mako freezes, takes a deep breath, and then lets out a long, rich laugh.

The air is crisp and crystalline after days cooped up inside, and even though the chill makes him want to cough, he feels like he can breathe again at last. The motor oil is replaced by cerulean skies bleeding into dark prussian topped with tossed marshmallow fluff before him.

Maybe his eyes are deceiving him as he shakes with laughter, but the trees seem to sway out of time with the lack of wind.

After taking the closest thing to a luxurious bath he can manage without plumbing, Mako lazily grabs a wine bottle he emptied during his tinkering fugue. He fills it with water and sets it in the ruins of the basket.

That’ll teach the bastard.

 

* * *

 

The heartstopping, gunshot-sharp noise of glass shattering against his door jolts Mako awake with a dose of adrenaline and near-instant regret.

He’s frozen in his bed, like a kid who just _knows_ there’s a monster in the closet. Only this time the monster is real and the closet is the entire world outside his little cabin. He’d gotten _laissez faire_ about the issue, but the townsfolk’s connotations of fear and wariness had to be based on _something_ , right?

Maybe this wasn’t just games. Maybe he’d angered 'The Horned God.'

He sweats in the cold, listening carefully. A minute passes, two. After somewhere around three or four, he finally finds the mettle to slide out of his bed, praying it doesn’t creak. He’s tip-toeing in his own home. Ridiculous, he thinks.

He stays quiet all the same.

When he opens the door, the remains of the bottle and the ice have created angular craters in the snow around his door. He does not dwell there long, looking up and out towards the woods. The moon’s light is hidden behind clouds tonight, and even with his vision adjusted to the darkness, he can barely tell the horizon from the ground

There.

 

 

Two little stars shine out from not-so-far away. Green and unwavering. Mako stands his ground, something telling him that to hide is not the answer here. Cool deference would serve him better than fear. He watches the watcher and the snow he can’t see dances around him. Wood thrice his age creeks and the wind finds its way into his little home, shooing out the heat and replacing it to bursting with icicle-sharp atmosphere.

The next time he blinks, it is morning.

The forest is empty in the grey-white reflection of pale clouds matting the sky. It’s empty like the bones of a sun-bleached carcass rising from the desert sands. It’s empty like his home, devoid of any real sentimental objects or history. It’s empty like the way he felt when he left his bike in that ditch.

It feels so good.

He’s crying? At least he thinks he is. His face is dry. It’s not cold though. Or maybe it is. It feels just like the rest of the air. He should probably move now. He retreats, stiff limbs taking him laboriously back inside.

Did something just happen? He’s not quite sure. He is hungry though.

He’s feeling lethargic, so the idea of cooking something up seems like too much trouble. He reaches, on instinct, to the red berries that have yet to wither upon his counter. The bright baubles speak loud and clear to his animal brain and he pops one between his teeth to discover a wonderfully sweet and strangely filling flavour.

He picks up a book and allows himself to slowly zone out once more, eyes following the trails of words left to right left to right black and white. Interspersed come the berries, one by one. His hearth remains unlit.

 

* * *

 

A day passes. One. Two. Books and breathing and quiet contemplation. A storm squats above the mountaintop, and then passes as quickly as it came. He lights his stove to cook a meal and then turns it off because he doesn’t like the heat. He shaves with a straight razor and repairs the seal on a window. He exists like skating across a frozen pond, without needing much energy to propel him forward, in a straight line, with no dips or rises. He debates going into town for trade, but the idea of other people makes him uncomfortable. He can put it off a bit longer.

(He dreams of the black again, dropping in medias res. The oil is familiar oil. Or maybe it’s oil or grease, or gas. Diesel in his lungs, choking him up as his huge chest quakes and shudders, trying to draw in the fresh air of the mountain forest. Maybe it’s asphalt, freshly poured or heated by the sun. Maybe it’s tattoo ink bleeding under the skin. All he knows is it’s _black_ and clinging and all he wants is the iridescent blanket of snow to clean out his eyesight and skin and lungs.

He left this. God, he left this. He doesn’t want to go back. He wants to stay here in the quiet and cool. But that’s left him now and all there is is the roaring of a herd of mechanical beasts in his ears and the crying at night echoing in the halls of the institution and the beeping of the heart monitor-

It all vanishes in a second. Two green, glittering stars appear, and it’s no longer _black_. It’s void. It’s the night sky. It’s perfect— raw and unpolluted by the light and sound and smell of industry. He’s home again. Back where he wants to be. He thanks all the gods he doesn’t believe in, and the one that he does.)

His bed is damp with sweat when he wakes, and he shakes off his covers like freshly fallen snow to open his windows and allow the chill to permeate. The green spots echo in his eyes, like he’s stared into twin suns for too long. He closes his eyes and breathes in the fresh air.

He’s hungry.

There are more berries sitting on his doorstep, cupped in a thick section of shorn off birch bark in the wake of the destroyed wicker basket. They’re accompanied by a few small mushrooms and other greenery. He lifts the package carefully.

Generous, considering he’d left nothing for days now.

This feels different though, and he retreats back into his home, almost sad to have the roof back above him. The berries fill him quickly, and the tiny fungi are subtle but strangely aromatic.

Well rested and well fed, he sets to work carving the thick section of birch left for him days ago, not sure of what he will make but with no reservations about why he makes it.

Behind the shingles, he can feel the sky.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, life has been busy and rough. Very, very fucking busy and rough. Poked away at this though and it's something at least. Love you all.
> 
> Thank you to [Gigi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mssileas/pseuds/piggybackride) and [Silly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scrunchles) for betaing. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Heya I'm pretty excited to be working on this one. Just letting loose and writing some real calm stuff for my own sake. Hopefully you'll join me on this little ride.
> 
> Social link junk:  
> [Tumblr](http://armatages.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/Armatage_S)  
> [Pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/ArmatageS)


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